Private view ... John Ablett, the curator of molluscs at the Natural History Museum, with the giant squid found off the coast of the Falkland Islands in April last year. Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA
Bad news for anyone trying to take a look at the giant squid that washed up recently at the Darwin Centre of the Natural History Museum in London at the weekend: it's not on open view, and to see it you must book a place on a tour - but all places are booked until the end of April. In addition, children under 10 aren't allowed to see it anyway, because some of the specimens in the centre are unsuitable for younger children, apparently. So: huge disappointment for youthful zoologists at the weekend, according to a friend whose daughter had especially wanted to see the 28ft creature.
Meanwhile, I was having a happier time with my five-year-old niece in Oxford's Natural History Museum, which last year won the Guardian's Family Friendly Museum award. On a chilly Sunday afternoon it was clear why the museum walked away with the award - every small child in the county seemed to be there, playing with activity kits, stroking the stuffed animals (there are very few "don't touch" signs), identifying dinosaur skeletons with terrifying taxonomical skill and gazing in admiration at the rather horrible Madagascan hissing cockroaches living in a tank. If it sometimes seemed like a chaotic playtime at primary school, it was pretty amazing to see so many kids having a great time in a museum.
At the back of Oxford's Natural History Museum is the Pitt Rivers, an ethnographic museum, which I've been wanting to visit since a reader named it as their favourite museum in a comment to a recent posting. Wow. The museum is utterly magical, a true cabinet of curiosities, a Wunderzimmer. The five-year-old was impressed by the storeys-high totem pole but found the experience "a bit dark and scary". But for an older child (or adult) it's an Eden of the imagination. Here are displays of zithers; lutes; rope stringing and netting; feather cloaks; treatment of dead enemies (yes, shrunken heads!); lace-making equipment; saddlery; musical bows; amulets and charms; lamps and lighting - it's like a Borgesian human encyclopaedia. The ground floor only is open at the moment while renovation work is completed on the upper floors. It's still unmissable.
Any other suggestions for museums for kids ...
